Maserati: Our buyers not fazed about fuel consumption

Italian supercar maker Maserati says that despite the growing focus on fuel consumption among its rival manufacturers, buyers are still willing to forego any environmental benefit if the pay-off comes in the form of better performance.

Maserati’s vehicle integration manager Benedetto Orvietani told Drive at the launch of the new GranCabrio Sport that the new car’s consumption figure of 14.5L/100km – an improvement over the existing model’s 15.2L – isn't of any real concern to buyers.

“Fuel consumption is one of the priorities, but it is not the highest,” he says. “In the end, our customer doesn’t buy a small, economical car; the customer doesn’t want this kind of car.

“That is not something that our customer wants now,” says Orvietani. “We have to work on it; we want to work on it – but it is not the priority, it’s one of the priorities.

“Of course the customer does want that the car is well designed and that it is also focussing on fuel consumption ... but the first goal that we have is that the customer has a good trade-off.”

Orvietani says that the trade-off in the GranCabrio Sport’s case is the extra power and better performance of the 4.7-litre, 331kW/510Nm V8 engine, but he says that Maserati may look at following the path of other makers that are employing extensive energy saving systems – such as electronic steering systems and brake energy recuperation systems.

Orvietani says that the new technologies aren’t likely to be used on the current engine range, but could be used on future products, such as the all-new four-door Quattroporte, expected to be due in 2013.

When quizzed over whether any future engines would possibly reconsider turbo-charging technology – as it did in the past with its Biturbo models, and as BMW and Mercedes-Benz are increasingly doing – Orvietani wouldn’t say either way.

“We have something else in our pockets, but I think that this [4.7-litre V8] engine has reached its best results. So it’s not something we’re [worried about] too much with this technology.